"What the fuck are we doing?" That was Robert Duvall, barking out the words to a bustling crew early one morning in Massachusetts on the 2014 set of The Judge. It's hard to believe the Oscar-winning actor has left us, even though he reached the wizened old age of 95. Duvall seemed more permanent, somehow. He was a craggy part of the pop culture landscape, having been a crucial ingredient of so many legendary films over the past seven decades. On that day during the making of The Judge, Robert Duvall sat in the center of a candlemaking shop redesigned to look like a busy small-town diner. He tapped his fingers on the counter, waiting patiently while Robert Downey Jr., who played his estranged son and was one of the producers, walked the set, clapping backs and building moral support. Vincent D'Onofrio, who played his hulking and loyal other son, brooded in a corner, prepping for the scene. Jeremy Strong, playing the third brother, a less-sharp underachiever, was also off by himself, muttering lines, staying in character, as the roomful of extras took their seats and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski lined up his shot and filled the room with atmospheric smoke. Nobody was exactly fooling around, but it was time to get rolling. All it took was Duvall's patience to reach an end: "What the fuck are we doing!" and everyone snapped to attention. Moviegoers were the same way with him, held rapt by whatever he had to say. Few actors could command the screen the way Duvall did. Few would have dared. Duvall was captivating from his very first role—as the shy but menacing shut-in Boo Radley in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird, to his very last, as an old occult scholar who's also (ironically) a shut-in, living alone in the woods until investigators come seeking his help in 2022's Pale Blue Eye. In between, he appeared in more classics than any one actor has a right to claim. He was part of Francis Ford Coppola's artistic circle in San Francisco, and the filmmaker cast him as the adopted consigliere Tom Haden in The Godfather and its even more cherished sequel (although Duvall wisely dodged the third one.) That led to his lead role in the first film made by Coppola's former assistant, George Lucas: the dystopian THX-1138. He was the original uptight battlefield surgeon Frank Burns in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, and Lt. Colonel Kilgore, who loved the smell of napalm in the morning in Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Intimidating, abusive fathers had nothing on Duvall as the fighter pilot who makes the ultimate sacrifice in the cockpit but can't tolerate losing a basketball game to his son in The Great Santini. Duvall finally won his Oscar for 1983's Tender Mercies, playing a country-western singer trying to set right the things that had gone wrong in his life. Scan through his formidable filmography and it's hard to find a missed step. He was impressive even in smaller roles in Network, in The Conversation, in Sling Blade, Days of Thunder, Colors, The Paper, A Civil Action, Open Range or Falling Down. Even if the movie itself was so-so, Duvall made it worthwhile. The roles that meant the most to him were some that he directed himself, like 1997's The Apostle, in which he played a fugitive preacher seeking to redeem himself for a stupid, lethal mistake. His next directorial effort, 2002's Assassination Tango, was essentially a way for him to use a thriller to put his skills as a dancer onscreen. The tango was one of his greatest passions. This also happened on the set of The Judge. The film's unit publicist, Spooky Stevens, recalled that while shooting in the tiny Massachusetts town of Shelburne Falls, she learned that a local woman was dying from terminal brain cancer. "She absolutely was mad about Robert Duvall and loved to tango. She was a huge tango person," Stevens recalls. (For privacy sake, we'll leave her anonymous.) "She asked if there would be any chance she could come by the set. She didn't need to spend any time with him. She just wanted to see him and maybe say hello." This kind of request was its own kind of complicated dance. Duvall was a gentleman, but "he could be gruff," Stevens recalled. "That was sort of his manner. Not that he was mean or anything." The first step was getting approval from Downey and his wife Susan Downey, who was also producing The Judge. "They said if it was fine with them, if it was okay with Mr. Duvall," Stevens says. "So I went to [Duvall's] wife, Luciana, and she said she thought it would be fine." |
Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall / photo by: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images |
The day came when the woman, her young son, and her husband visited the shoot. "I just picture her face," Stevens says. "She always had a scarf, the kind that women with cancer wear after they have lost their hair." At lunch, the family entered the cast and crew tent for the buffet. They saw Duvall sitting with his wife, but kept a respectful distance. Then he called out to them: "Robert says, 'Where are you going? Have you eaten? Sit down here…'" "We sat and had a really lovely lunch and chatted," Stevens continued. "She was just happy, and her husband was beside himself. I don't think he ever stopped grinning. And then Robert said to her, 'I understand you…'—and I'm getting teary here—'I understand you like to tango.' And she said, 'Yes, I used to quite a bit. And he said, 'Would you like to dance?' By this time, everybody had left the lunch tent. I don't think hardly anybody else saw, except maybe a few people. He got up and he danced with her in a tango. And afterward, he told her that she was so good..." Make no mistake, Duvall could be a heller when he wanted to be. He could also be unspeakably tender. Balancing both is what made him so beguiling to watch. In addition to acting, dancing, and directing, Duvall was also a producer, and helped bring the 2009 film Crazy Heart to the screen. That movie won Jeff Bridges the lead actor Oscar, just as a similar story of a country singer won Duvall his. In that movie, Duvall had another scene-stealing small role as one of Bridges's lifelong friends, and it deepened a lasting real-life friendship with filmmaker Scott Cooper, who gave the actor his final role at the age of 91. "He's been a mentor of mine for a long time," Cooper told me in 2022 when Pale Blue Eye was coming out. "He produced Crazy Heart. We've acted in a couple of movies together [Gods and Generals, Get Low]. I was married at his estate in Virginia. He's like a second father to me." Well, gave isn't quite the right word. "He asked to read it, and said, 'I would love to play this part.' And I said, 'The part is yours.'" That's essentially what happened on the set of The Judge, a movie that earned Duvall another of his seven total Oscar nominations. Duvall declared he was ready—"What the fuck are we doing!"—and everyone snapped to attention. What he wanted was his, not out of meanness or intimidation, but out of respect. That's what Duvall commanded. "Duvall is a big deal to me," Downey told me on the set of that movie. "There's all that daddy projection and stuff." The Iron Man star was in awe of Duvall's role in Colors, playing opposite Sean Penn as a fearless L.A.P.D. anti-gang cop, who uses his wiles and charms rather than sheer force to get the bad guys in line, and often quoted his lines from the 1988 drama. But the hero worship dissipated when they began working side by side. Duvall asked to meet with his three sons—Downey, D'Onofrio and Strong—at the start of production. What did the actor want …? No one can say. Duvall was already in character as the title figure, an imperious old man who can't admit that might have gone astray. "It started out with Duvall who, literally for 82 minutes, was in a continual character observation mode. Never said a word as himself, but was going off on tangents," Downey said. "Out of all of us, I was kind of gobsmacked. Duvall as the Judge would say something, and then send Dale [Strong] and Glen [D'Onofrio] out of the room to get a drink. And then he'd focus on me, and kind of pick on me. Then he'd be really light, and I'd get vulnerable–and he wouldn't like that. It was like doing almost an entire movie worth of ins-and-outs in one take." "I didn't want to break it," Downey continued. "During that improv, during rehearsals, we strangely became a family." What the fuck are we doing? Without Duvall, it's harder to know for sure. By Anthony Breznican |
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Robert Duvall / photo by: Chuck Fishman/Getty Images |
I rewatched Waiting for Guffman over the long President's Day weekend. The community theater mockumentary stars Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard—two comedians who have sadly left us. The blows keep coming: This week began with the news that actor Robert Duvall died at the age of 95. I recently completed my umpteenth viewing of The Godfather. My fiancée had never seen it, so I completed the time-honored boyfriend ritual. Apocalypse Now is next in the queue.
What are your favorite Duvall films? M*A*S*H? Network? Tender Mercies? Let me know by writing me a note at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com. Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here. |
The Continuing Adventures of the Esquire Entertainment Desk |
Andrew Bird talked to Esquire about writing the first original song for The Pitt. The HBO Max medical drama usually doesn't have any music playing over the hospital machine beeps and the actors' stream of terminology. But for a particularly somber moment at the end of episode 6, HBO reached out to the singer-songwriter to create something special. Read the interview here.
Did you see Wuthering Heights on Valentine's Day? Anthony Breznican wrote about why the new film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi is the "ideal date movie." Read Breznican's review of Wuthering Heights here.
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Peter Claffey in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms / photo by: HBO |
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The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week |
Winner: Lucas Pinheiro Braathen The 25-year-old alpine skier became the first South American athlete to win a medal at the Winter Olympics when he took home the gold medal in the men's giant slalom event. "What's so special about the Olympics is that it's universal. It will be broadcast everywhere," Braathen told Esquire this time last year. "It is truly the biggest stage, where I can bring the Brazilian flag to the top of a new sport." Loser: Cheap Medals Multiple athletes at the Olympics claim that their gold medals are breaking in half with the slightest bit of resistance. "I was jumping in excitement and it broke," US downhill skier Breezy Johnson told the press, holding up her broken medal. "I'm sure somebody will fix it," she continued, but "they don't let you have multiples of those things." Winner: Martin Scorsese, Alien The celebrated director appears to voice an alien in the new trailer for Star Wars' The Mandalorian and Grogu, as Pedro Pascal's bounty hunter talks to a four-armed space monkey (with white, burly eyebrows) who sounds uncannily like Scorsese. I'm dying to find out the insane name they gave him. Loser: The NBA Slam Dunk Contest I respect the athletes who stepped up to compete in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest this year. This was easily the biggest stage of the 2025-2026 season for winner Keshad Johnson, an athlete few NBA fans have ever heard of. But hear me out: It's possible that we've just figured out all the ways you can dunk a basketball into a hoop. Winner: The HBO Dunk Contest The latest Game of Thrones spin-off series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, featured a knight named Dunk engaging in an All-Star death match of his own on Sunday night, where he was immediately knocked on his ass like Orlando Magic's Jase Richardson. Still, his eventual victory made for one of the best episodes of the series so far, and I can't wait for the season finale this week. |
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